4 ms·

You left out the part where he and his wife were each working 18 hours a day and saving every penny of earnings to the point where his kids were so hungry they

by koolba 6y ago

You left out the part where he and his wife were each working 18 hours a day and saving every penny of earnings to the point where his kids were so hungry they were stealing other children’s lunches.

ggggtez 6y ago
This sentiment is backwards. You seem to be implying that the children wouldn't be hungry if he wasn't granted a free franchise to run and profit from. Obviously you are trying to imply that it was the "saving every penny" that made him rich, not the "granted a franchise to run". But let's be real: You can't save money you didn't make to start with. The above poster is clearly calling out the gift as the reason for his success.
- koolba 6y ago
  I’m not implying that at all. I’m saying the real secret ingredient is a combination of grit and focus. There’s plenty of people in the USA presented with much more opportunity than this man received. Few have achieved anywhere near as much. I’d wager that if he got his first job as a janitor he’d be running a cleaning empire rather than a donut chain.
  - derrida 6y ago
    If you did that you might end up broke like him!
  - nsoonhui 6y ago
    Hardwork and grit is overrated. Without proper opportunity you can achieve nothing. I wish we keep survivor bias in mind when reading success stories; we should ask "out of those who work hard and gritty, how many are successful and how many are actually not?" And not "out of those who are successful, how many are hardworking?" Most of the time, hardwork is just the minimum prerequisite to success that every aspirants have, de-emphasizing the role of luck in life is simply unwise.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - manigandham 6y ago
      Hardwork and grit are absolutely not overrated and deliver a comfortable life for millions of people. If you're talking about cases of extraordinary success like this person, then hard work can vastly increase the amount of opportunity you're exposed to. Nobody says luck isn't involved, but you can improve your odds of getting lucky.
      - jedrek 6y ago
        Hard work and grit are tied to millions more cases of folks being among the working poor.
    - frakkingcylons 6y ago
      I disagree but only because I have a lower bar in mind for success. Success to me doesn't mean being a multi-millionaire or at the top of your field of interest. To me, a comfortable middle-class life is quite good (and I'm used to it). From that perspective, a cushy upper middle-class life -- the life of most people in software -- is quite a success.
    - unishark 6y ago
      Opportunity is not luck. It is everywhere. Saying opportunity is necessary is like saying air is necessary. The "luck theory" is the one that is damaging. Because the biggest real problem is people don't know about opportunities. This is one big advantage certain immigrant groups have over even locals. They have networks of people from their country telling them where to go, what skills to get, what jobs to get, how to deal with every detail of every hurdle. It's practically a mentoring system for how to succeed in the US.
  - fossuser 6y ago
    Not really relevant to the idea of your point, but his first job was as a janitor (mentioned in the article). He expanded into others, including the donut shop.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
rmason 6y ago
I've heard similar tales here in Michigan when Dominos and Little Caesars were getting started. A worker gets a franchise and in a couple of years he's got a dozen. In Lansing Biggby's Coffee got started. Right now they're in a dozen states. I've met the two founders, one of their first employees who was a recent immigrant now owns over 100 stores.
- adventured 6y ago
  It's a very successful model if you have discipline and the required cash flow to roll from property to property, scaling the cash flow. It's the same reason it can work so well in real-estate. In small franchise attempts, most people get stuck in the first few units, their margins don't kick off enough cash and entropy eats at them persistently. Fat margins are your primary protector against the zillion problems that will try to kill you early on. Anyone that can successfully build a self-sustaining expansion (in franchising) on tiny margins will always have my utmost respect, it's exceptionally difficult to do.
vkou 6y ago
There are plenty of people who work that hard, doing what today is defined an 'essential' job, and yet, get nowhere. Many of them would love to be gifted a franchise that brings into their wallet, inflation-adjusted, ~200,000K in profit a year.
- kjksf 6y ago
  He wasn't gifted anything. The article is loosely worded but what happened was that first he invested 3 months of his time (while holding other jobs to support himself) into Winchell's training program. Winchell is a franchise of donut shops. I don't know what the deal was back then, but today "Winchell's has a franchise fee of up to $0, with a total initial investment range of $3,400 to $44,700" https://www.franchisegrade.com/franchises/winchell-s https://www.franchisegrade.com/franchises/winchell-s His first donut shop was a Winchell franchise. A franchise is not a gift. He had to work hard, make the business profitable and pay back portion of the profits back to Winchell. He became rich by extremely hard work, saving all his profits and re-investing them into opening more donut shops.
  - rbrtl 6y ago
    And working his kids extremely hard, without even managing to feed them...
  - 93po 6y ago
    Find me a place in 2020 that will give you a significant part of a franchise's profits with zero experience and three months of training. And find me a franchise that will give me enough profit to buy a house with cash after only two years. And find me a franchise that I can buy with a few months of savings. None of these exist in 2020 and virtually anyone in 2020 would consider this series of events akin to winning the lottery. It's unheard of and preposterous.

by koolba 6y ago

ggggtez 6y ago

This sentiment is backwards. You seem to be implying that the children wouldn't be hungry if he wasn't granted a free franchise to run and profit from. Obviously you are trying to imply that it was the "saving every penny" that made him rich, not the "granted a franchise to run". But let's be real: You can't save money you didn't make to start with. The above poster is clearly calling out the gift as the reason for his success.

koolba 6y ago
I’m not implying that at all. I’m saying the real secret ingredient is a combination of grit and focus. There’s plenty of people in the USA presented with much more opportunity than this man received. Few have achieved anywhere near as much. I’d wager that if he got his first job as a janitor he’d be running a cleaning empire rather than a donut chain.
- derrida 6y ago
  If you did that you might end up broke like him!
- nsoonhui 6y ago
  Hardwork and grit is overrated. Without proper opportunity you can achieve nothing. I wish we keep survivor bias in mind when reading success stories; we should ask "out of those who work hard and gritty, how many are successful and how many are actually not?" And not "out of those who are successful, how many are hardworking?" Most of the time, hardwork is just the minimum prerequisite to success that every aspirants have, de-emphasizing the role of luck in life is simply unwise.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - manigandham 6y ago
    Hardwork and grit are absolutely not overrated and deliver a comfortable life for millions of people. If you're talking about cases of extraordinary success like this person, then hard work can vastly increase the amount of opportunity you're exposed to. Nobody says luck isn't involved, but you can improve your odds of getting lucky.
    - jedrek 6y ago
      Hard work and grit are tied to millions more cases of folks being among the working poor.
  - frakkingcylons 6y ago
    I disagree but only because I have a lower bar in mind for success. Success to me doesn't mean being a multi-millionaire or at the top of your field of interest. To me, a comfortable middle-class life is quite good (and I'm used to it). From that perspective, a cushy upper middle-class life -- the life of most people in software -- is quite a success.
  - unishark 6y ago
    Opportunity is not luck. It is everywhere. Saying opportunity is necessary is like saying air is necessary. The "luck theory" is the one that is damaging. Because the biggest real problem is people don't know about opportunities. This is one big advantage certain immigrant groups have over even locals. They have networks of people from their country telling them where to go, what skills to get, what jobs to get, how to deal with every detail of every hurdle. It's practically a mentoring system for how to succeed in the US.
- fossuser 6y ago
  Not really relevant to the idea of your point, but his first job was as a janitor (mentioned in the article). He expanded into others, including the donut shop.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

rmason 6y ago

I've heard similar tales here in Michigan when Dominos and Little Caesars were getting started. A worker gets a franchise and in a couple of years he's got a dozen. In Lansing Biggby's Coffee got started. Right now they're in a dozen states. I've met the two founders, one of their first employees who was a recent immigrant now owns over 100 stores.

adventured 6y ago
It's a very successful model if you have discipline and the required cash flow to roll from property to property, scaling the cash flow. It's the same reason it can work so well in real-estate. In small franchise attempts, most people get stuck in the first few units, their margins don't kick off enough cash and entropy eats at them persistently. Fat margins are your primary protector against the zillion problems that will try to kill you early on. Anyone that can successfully build a self-sustaining expansion (in franchising) on tiny margins will always have my utmost respect, it's exceptionally difficult to do.

vkou 6y ago

There are plenty of people who work that hard, doing what today is defined an 'essential' job, and yet, get nowhere. Many of them would love to be gifted a franchise that brings into their wallet, inflation-adjusted, ~200,000K in profit a year.

kjksf 6y ago
He wasn't gifted anything. The article is loosely worded but what happened was that first he invested 3 months of his time (while holding other jobs to support himself) into Winchell's training program. Winchell is a franchise of donut shops. I don't know what the deal was back then, but today "Winchell's has a franchise fee of up to $0, with a total initial investment range of $3,400 to $44,700" https://www.franchisegrade.com/franchises/winchell-s https://www.franchisegrade.com/franchises/winchell-s His first donut shop was a Winchell franchise. A franchise is not a gift. He had to work hard, make the business profitable and pay back portion of the profits back to Winchell. He became rich by extremely hard work, saving all his profits and re-investing them into opening more donut shops.
- rbrtl 6y ago
  And working his kids extremely hard, without even managing to feed them...
- 93po 6y ago
  Find me a place in 2020 that will give you a significant part of a franchise's profits with zero experience and three months of training. And find me a franchise that will give me enough profit to buy a house with cash after only two years. And find me a franchise that I can buy with a few months of savings. None of these exist in 2020 and virtually anyone in 2020 would consider this series of events akin to winning the lottery. It's unheard of and preposterous.